Remarks
On our last attempt to set anchors, we found reasonable ground and the
wind eased allowing stable conditions for one more attempt at
calibrating the echo-sounders. We were successful and the
hydroacoustic team is happy. The sun also appeared for the first time
for a few days and has remained with us. Once the calibration was
complete, we headed back to the last station on the 140E longitude
transect at 66 20S. This site was a deep basin of 500-800m in the
continental shelf surrounded by ground of 200m depth. This site
produced a Antarctic krill in deep trawls and ice krill in the surface
waters. Numerous Antarctic herring (Pleuragramma) were caught in both
the IYGPT and RMT nets. Smaller nets caught large amounts of diatom
phytoplankton. The clear skies and light SE wind brought cold
conditions of -5 deg C, making for a slippery icy deck and frozen nets.
We are now travelling along the west-east transect (66 20S) towards
Mertz Glacier and have already completed the next station on this line
in 166m water depth. More Pleuragramma adults, juveniles and larvae
were collected plus a number of ice fish juveniles. The French team
are happy as they have collected specimens from each of the known year
groups of Pleuragramma. Surprisingly, Antarctic krill dominated the
trawls instead the ice krill. The zooplankton team are happy with more
unique species of gelatinous zooplankton, some are likely to be new
species. Overall, in the last 24 hours we have calibrated the echo-
sounders, completed two stations and done six plankton net hauls, five
IYGPT nets, eight RMT nets and two CTD casts. Regards Graham and
Takashi